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Why am I running 100km?

Well, it’ll actually be around 105km by the time I’m complete. The simple answer to this is because I want to. I’ve never ran this distance before in any shape or form. My longest distance ran was 85km Glasgow to Edinburgh and the next distance down from that was 72km on Cape Wrath Ultra. So 105km is quite a step up!

I’m nervous and excited in equal measure. I don’t know how I’ll fare which is all part of the fun. My training has been limited but if Cape Wrath has taught me anything, it is that I can do an awful lot and endure an awful lot more than I think.

The challenge is one of our own making. A colleague mentioned he’d like to run home from work, and home is in Berwickshire, work is Edinburgh. He’d also like to run 100km. The arbitrary finish line of his house seemed too close to England to me and so my suggestion of running the extra 16miles to England was agreed to.

The route was fairly simple, and as the rough map shows, the border is 100km away and we’d finish in Berwick Upon Tweed 5km further down the coast.

Planning started and a date set to be around midsummer to maximise light and minimise running in the dark.

Training has been hit and miss, after my run scotland effort I hadn’t ran long and still really haven’t. But if rest is preparation then I’ve done bucket loads of that.

A few weeks before the date I was due to go on leave, work was particularly busy and low and behold a cold developed. I returned from the warmer climate of the Mediterranean with a runny nose and a chesty cough.

As this was our own challenge, we delayed the start by two weeks. No pressure of an immovable race day was lovely. Making our own rules and our own challenges means flexibility.

So it comes to race week, I’ve managed to cut travelling with work to only one day this week so I can be as rested as I can be come Friday.

The plan:

Leave work at 5pm, head to the coast and follow until Longniddry using off-road paths and promenade. Head inland to Haddington on a disused railway path where we will pick up the course of the River Tyne to East Linton and Belhaven and onto Dunbar. From here we’re on the Berwickshire coastal path where the fun starts. Here it’s hilly, up and down cliffs and we will be tired. It’ll be 4/5am before we reach Nicks house and then some 16miles to the border. Potentially arriving around 8 or 9am Saturday morning.

There will be pain, that I am sure. There will be hunger and euphoria and potentially there will be disaster. But we will try. And we will be the better for it.